ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Prismark10 Telstar is the satellite that inspired British music producer and his in house band The Tornadoes to launch the instrumental record which became the first US number 1 hit by a British group.Meek who operated out of the top of of a leather good shop was a maverick like Phil Spector, and just like Spector with a fondness of guns.The film starts and feels like a stage play very much in keeping with its origins as a stage play and low budget adaptation as a film. Con O'Neill (reprising the part from the play) plays Meek, harried, frazzled, on the edge with drugs keeping him going. Kevin Spacey makes a cameo as Major Banks his business backer who keeps the whole enterprise in even keel as we find that Meek is certainly no businessman.Somewhere within the chaos of the upstairs apartment cum music studio Meek who could not read or write music and was ridiculed for being tone deaf managed to produced a string of heats and had major musician working under him such as Ritchie Blackmore, Chas Hodges. I shall omit Screaming Lord Sutch as a major musician though.However the pill popping, plagiarism accusations, arrest for importuning in a public toilet, his falling out with the Major lead to deepening financial turmoil and the falling out with friends and musicians. The hits dried up and in a tragic demise he ended up shooting his landlady and himself.The film by actor turned director Nick Moran is rather messy. Moran does well with a low budget to evoke a sixties atmosphere which is away from the swinging which was so beloved by past filmmakers.Its nice to see support from Spacey, James Corden as well as some of the real life people who associated with Meek turn up such as Jess Conrad.However the film feels overlong and as Moran tries to imbue Meek with some psychological character traits based on his upbringing and his past family life it feels like a failure as it adds little. Many people of his generation had family affected by The Great War or trauma in childhood.I found this a middling film whose kinetic energy runs out midway through and the film starts to drag until the tragic ending.

Adam Peters (65%) At fifteen or so minutes in this pushed very few buttons for me, and as I had no idea who Joe Meek actually was, the temptation to give the remaining three quarters a skip and move on passed my mind, but I'm glad that I didn't because this heats up very nicely. Con O'Neill is sublime in the lead role as the hugely hyped-up, at times very angry, yet unquestionably passionate hit music creator during the swinging days of London in the 60's. The backing cast is made up of a host of UK talent, with Kevin Spacey adding even more quality to the production. This may be a bit to clumsily written at times with a script that feels a bit too much like a stageplay rather than a screenplay, but this is still an important piece of well told pop music history.

richardthompson5 Telstar seems to be in my psyche one of those tunes which I grew up hearing as it was released the day after I was born when I used to have it in my collection without knowing where the record had come from, my parents always had a pile of old records. The Tornados other tracks sounded similar, is there life on Venus, like something from outer space, there was something there, when The Beatles tend to be more over rated in hindsight, it can look as though sometimes they were better than everyone else from the early sixties Saw this film on catch up on TV, then I could fast forward it, couldn't watch it with my mother like I did the Arena documentary back in 1991, there was too much swearing in this, was that language really so much in use back then or do they just have to use it in films that are made these days? I didn't think James Corden looked like Clem Cattini either and while all that music could have driven Joe a bit crazy, this film didn't seem to do him much justice.

arjunkaul This is a cinematic adaptation of the life of Joe Meek.If you don't know who Joe Meek was, lets just say that he was a pivotal figure in the evolution of popular music whose innovative production techniques and zeal for creation laid the path for a lot of the things that are recorded and broadcast today.This movie by Nick Moran may not be factually accurate let me say that upfront. So don't treat it as a dossier on Joe Meek's life or that of his colleagues. This film is however a tribute to Joe Meek and certainly has some of the things that Joe was great at: Music, Inspiring people and being a sensitive soul.Good performances from everyone. Thats one thing about British cinema. You can be assured of superior acting than their American counterparts. That's a given.I've put an open letter from Patrick Pink in the forum below in case you may care to read it. Its his less than happy reaction on the film.However, this film will certainly help spread the legend of Joe Meek and Telstar and its definitely a good movie to watch.You will feel lousy for him at the end of the movie. For him as well as the other pop music heroes who then succumbed to their less than great fortunes as ordinary people and died in squalor and poverty unknown to the rest of the world. That's pretty phucking sad!Watch it, let the music inspire you and say a prayer for them.